The Other Side of the Glass

Part One was officially released June 2013 in digital distribution format. To purchase to to www.theothersideoftheglass.com If you were a donor and want to download your copy send an email to theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com.

The trailer

Monday, March 19, 2007

The Human Experiment

It's called progress. And, here is yet another example of the case for seeking a more natural way of living because too many modern miracles are too often shown to be killers. " Innocent until proven guilty" is a good thing in our court systems. It's not a good thing in introducing technology into mainstream use before we know it is truly safe, because we are finding too many times that we were deceived -- often, by ourselves, to believe that something is safe. We are deceived by our own unmet needs that are about vanity, position, wealth, acceptance, and advancement in a material, physically focused society.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who use tanning beds do not protect themselves from skin damage from subsequent sun exposure, an international research group has concluded. In fact, use of sunbeds before age 35 substantially increases the risk of developing melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer, the investigators found.

"Young adults should be discouraged from using indoor tanning equipment and restricted access to sunbeds by minors should be strongly considered," the Working Group on artificial UV light and skin cancer of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concludes in the March 1 issue of the International Journal of Cancer.

The group reviewed all studies done up until March 2006 to investigate the relationship between sunbed use and skin.
cancer.http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070319/sc_nm/early_sunbed
_use_boosts_melanoma_risk_dc

What to do when you read something like this and you went to tanning booths for years?? Same as what to do when we hear Vioxx killed a lot of people and Paxil makes people more depressed and suicidal. Same as what to do when we learned that xrays and DES were dangerous after all. Same as what to do when Ether was shown to be dangerous for the mother and baby. Same as what we'll do when they finally conclude that cell phones are dangerous, that sonograms are dangerous, that induction is dangerous, that epidural is dangerous, that sucking about out with an extraction machine is dangerous, and that cesarean is dangerous (even when also lifesaving). What do we do when we learn this news -- the truth of something we are doing or have done? We panic, we deny it, we get mad, then we deny it, we panic and in the end, we have to live with our choices and the consequences.

We LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES ... and go into some level of fear and denial, the result of which is a physiological, hormonal reaction that makes us sicker. Our fear makes our mind worry about the future and draw it to us. And, oddly, strangely, inexplicably we have to rely on those who said it was safe and caused it, for our cancer treatment, or drug therapy, or surgical treatment --- Scientists, doctors, Big Pharm, and Big Business. Meanwhile, the "natural" non-technological, non-chemical way of life is now called "alternative" (that is just so odd to me!)and those who pursue it are socially weird. Meanwhile, technology reigns so that natural birth is denigrated and made nearly impossible to achieve in the hospitals -- while the procedures known to be unsafe, even when lifesaving, but are now done routinely on healthy women and babies continue. Things that make me go, Hmmmmmm somedays and %@$^#*@@@%$ $&$*$*@ too many days.

The article ends with, "The strength of the existing evidence suggests that policy makers should strongly consider enacting measures such as restricting minors and discouraging young adults from using indoor tanning equipment, in order to protect the general population from additional risk for melanoma and squamous cell skin cancer," the IARC group concludes.

Yeah, well, riiiight, that has really worked with tobacco, pot, alcohol, and heroin. And policy makers certainly have not made any gains for protecting babies and women in the birth machine. Our young girls (and boys) are being programmed by the messages of society, via the multiple forms of media. Our policy makers need to support measures that support early healthy conception, gestation, labor and birth, that protect birthing women and babies, and allocates financial resources towards these goals.

SOURCE: International Journal of Cancer, March 1, 2007.

And, yes, I am a hypocrite. I like my comforts and my toys. As I sit here at the "wireless" computer while what I imagine to be unimaginable Internet, electricity, and cell phone tower beams criss-crossing through me, and all that that could mean to my energetic being self, I am thinkin' ..... God, PLEASE let the internet be good for us!"

No comments:

"Soft is the heart of a child. Do not harden it."

A public awareness reminder that things that happen behind the scenes, out of our sight, aren't always as rosy as we might think them to be. Perhaps its a restaurant cook who accidentally drops your burger on the floor before placing it on the bun and serving it to you. Here it's an overworked apathetic (pathetic) nurse giving my newborn daughter her first bath. Please comment and rate this video, so as to insure that it is viewed as widely as possible, perhaps to prevent other such abuse. -- The mother who posted this YouTube. How NOT to wash a baby on YouTube Are you going to try to tell me that "babies don't remember?" There is no difference to this baby's experience and the imprinting of her nervous system/brain and one that is held and cleaned by the mother or father either at the hospital or at home? By the way, this is probably NOT the baby's first bath. The nurse is ungloved. Medical staff protocol is that they can't handle a baby ungloved until is has been bathed (scrubbed if you've seen it) because the baby is a BIO-HAZARD -- for them. Never mind that the bio-hazard IS the baby's first line of defense against hospital germs.

Missouri Senator Louden Speaks

Finally, A Birth Film for Fathers

Part One of the "The Other Side of the Glass: Finally, A Birth Film for and about Men" was released June, 2013.

Through presentation of the current research and stories of fathers, the routine use of interventions are questioned. How we protect and support the physiological need of the human newborn attachment sequence is the foundation for creating safe birth wherever birth happens.

Based on knowing that babies are sentient beings and the experience of birth is remembered in the body, mind, and soul, fathers are asked to research for themselves what is best for their partner and baby and to prepare to protect their baby.

The film is designed for midwives, doulas, and couples, particularly fathers to work with their caregivers. Doctors and nurses in the medical environment are asked to "be kind" to the laboring, birthing baby, and newborn. They are called to be accountable for doing what science has been so clear about for decades. The mother-baby relationship is core for life. Doctors and nurses and hospital caregivers and administrators are asked to create protocols that protect the mother-baby relationship.

Men are asked to join together to address the vagaries of the medical system that harm their partner, baby and self in the process of the most defining moments of their lives. Men are asked to begin to challenge the system BEFORE they even conceive babies as there is no way to be assured of being able to protect his loved ones once they are in the medical machine, the war zone, on the conveyor belt -- some of the ways that men describe their journey into fatherhood in the medicine culture.

Donors can email theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com to get a digital copy.
Buy the film at www.theothersideoftheglass.com.

The film focuses on the male baby, his journey from the womb to the world and reveals healing and integrating the mother, father, and baby's wounded birth experience. The film is about the restoring of our families, society, and world through birthing loved, protected, and nurtured males (and females, of course). It's about empowering males to support the females to birth humanity safely, lovingly, and consciously.

Finally, a birth film for fathers.

What People Are Saying About the FIlm

Well, I finally had a chance to check out the trailer and .. wow! It's nice that they're acknowledging the father has more than just cursory rights (of course mom's rights are rarely acknowledged either) and it's great that they're bringing out the impact of the experience on the newborn, but I'm really impressed that they're not shying away from the political side.

They are rightly calling what happens in every American maternity unit, every day, by its rightful name - abuse. Abuse of the newborn, abuse of the parents and their rights, abuse of the supposedly sacrosanct ethical principal of patient autonomy and the medico-legal doctrine of informed consent, which has been long ago discarded in all but name. I love it!

In the immortal words of the "shrub", "bring it on!" This film needs to be shown and if I can help facilitate or promote it, let me know.

Father in Asheville, NC


OMG'ess, I just saw the trailer and am in tears. This is so needed. I watch over and over and over as fathers get swallowed in the fear of hospitals birth practice. I need a tool like this to help fathers see how very vital it is for them to protect their partner and baby. I am torn apart every time I see a father stand back and chew his knuckle while his wife is essentially assaulted or his baby is left to lie there screaming.
Please send me more info!!!!
Carrie Hankins
CD(DONA), CCCE, Aspiring Midwife
720-936-3609


Thanks for sharing this. It was very touching to me. I thought of my brother-in-law standing on the other side of the glass when my sister had to have a C-section with her first child because the doctor was missing his golf date. I'll never forget his pacing back and forth and my realizing that he was already a father, even though he hadn't been allowed to be with his son yet.

Margaret, Columbia, MO

In case you don't find me here

Soon, I'll be back to heavy-duty editing and it will be quiet here again. I keep thinking this blog is winding down, and then it revives. It is so important to me.

I wish I'd kept a blog of my journey with this film this past 10 months. It's been amazing.

I have a new blog address for the film, and will keep a journal of simple reporting of the journey for the rest of the film.


www.theothersideoftheglassthefilm.blogspot.com


I'll be heading east this week to meet with a group of men. I plan to post pictures and clips on the film blog.

I'll keep up here when I can -- when I learn something juicy, outrageous, or inspiring related to making birth safer for the birthing baby.

Review of the film

Most of us were born surrounded by people who had no clue about how aware and feeling we were. This trailer triggers a lot of emotions for people if they have not considered the baby's needs and were not considered as a baby. Most of us born in the US were not. The final film will include detailed and profound information about the science-based, cutting-edge therapies for healing birth trauma.

The full film will have the interviews of a wider spectrum of professionals and fathers, and will include a third birth, at home, where the caregivers do a necessary intervention, suctioning, while being conscious of the baby.

The final version will feature OBs, RNs, CNMs, LM, CPM, Doulas, childbirth educators, pre and perinatal psychologists and trauma healing therapists, physiologists, neurologists, speech therapists and lots and lots of fathers -- will hopefully be done in early 2009.

The final version will include the science needed to advocated for delayed cord clamping, and the science that shows when a baby needs to be suctioned and addresses other interventions. Experts in conscious parenting will teach how to be present with a sentient newborn in a conscious, gentle way -- especially when administering life-saving techniques.

The goal is to keep the baby in the mother's arms so that the baby gets all of his or her placental blood and to avoid unnecessary, violating, and abusive touch and interactions. When we do that, whether at home or hospital, with doctor or midwife, the birth is safe for the father. The "trick" for birthing men and women is how to make it happen in the hospital.

Birth Trauma Healing

Ani DeFranco Speaks About Her Homebirth

"Self-Evident" by Ani DeFranco

Patrick Houser at www.Fatherstobe.org

Colin speaks out about interventions at birth

Dolphins